


Unseen

by BrokenHeadphones



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Ghosts, I mean that's what the society does, Kidnapping, Original Character(s), because that's normal, haunted cabin in the woods, let's be honest they kidnap and abduct people all the darn time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenHeadphones/pseuds/BrokenHeadphones
Summary: In which the Blind Eye sees all and Dipper doesn’t.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during Little Dipper, until Dipper goes a-hunting for the size-altering crystals.  
> This will probably be as fluffy as a story about a demon who wants to destroy society cohabitating with an amnesiac twelve-year-old boy can be.
> 
> -Also, this is just to get some creative energies out of my system. I will get back to this, but I probably won't be seriously focused on this until I've made a little more headway on Into the Woods. *subtle self-advertising here* If you like Over the Garden Wall, you should totally give it a look-see! Or even if you're not.-

He loved his sister. He loved his sister.  _ Dipper loved Mabel. _

He had to keep reminding himself of that, because it was really, really difficult to like her right now. He wasn’t  _ short _ , it was  _ one millimeter _ . Besides, even if he wasn’t the manliest, boys grew up taller than girls on average, right? Right.

He slowed his steps and took out the journal. The crystals had to be around here somewhere, right? As his eyes traced the pages for anymore clues, his feet tripped over a log and he could have sworn he felt a force at his back (or maybe the force came first?), and the next thing he knew, he found himself tumbling down a hillside. He blacked out before he even realised his head hit anything.

Another figure calmly made his way down the hillside, gathering the journal before turning to Dipper. He gave a jovial ‘tsk’, like scolding an amusing toddler rather than facing an unconscious pre-teen, before he scooped up the boy, “You boys and your journals. Y’all get too curious for your own good.”

 

◬◬◬

 

When Dipper woke, it was to chanting, and everything was dark. He opened his eyes. Everything was still dark. He shifted, and the chanting (Latin? It had sounded Latin) stopped.

“Who is the subject of this meeting?” a voice spoke alone, and Dipper could see again.

He really wanted the bag over his head back. Darkness was better than the crimson-robed entities that surrounded him.

“This boy. Dipper Pines,” said a voice that sounded familiar. “And he was carryin’ this book around.”

The journal! Dipper struggled against the bindings- he couldn’t let them take it! He still hadn’t finished it (for the third time)!

“Calm down, child,” the first voice spoke. It came from the man in front of him, the tallest of the bunch. With the way he took charge, it was safe to assume he was probably the leader of the group. “Now, what have you seen?”

“Speak!” the figures around him chorused. Dipper glared around at the figures, “No way- let me go! Who are you guys, anyway?”

There was a pause, before the man in front of him spoke, “Well, it’s not like you’ll remember this anyways.”

There was a general murmur of agreement as those around him began lowering their hoods.

“Wait a- Toby Determined? Bud Gleeful? What is this?” Dipper asked. The man in front lowered his hood last, “I am Blind Ivan, and we are the Society of the Blind Eye. We keep those who pass through and live in Gravity Falls blissfully unaware of that which goes bump in the night. And the day. By erasing their memories.”

Dipper shuddered, “No- no, you can’t just- just erase my mind--”

“Oh, calm down, it doesn’t hurt, and you’ll be back home before you know it,” Blind Ivan assured him, picking up a ray gun. “All this does is keep everyone a little less afraid and a lot more content.”

“I-I’ll know! I’ll remember, and- and I’ll get my memories back!”   
“Once a memory is in the Hall of the Forgotten, it’s never reclaimed,” Blind Ivan replied, turning a dial on the back of the gun. “You’ll go home, and it’ll be like this never...even...happened. There we go.”

Blind Ivan aimed the gun at Dipper, and pulled the trigger.

◬

The boy blinked awake, woozy. He was surrounded by red-cloaked figures. He should probably be unnerved, but he wasn’t even really there.

“Dipper Pines, what do you know of the mysteries of Gravity Falls?”

_ Dipper? Gravity Falls? What? _

He blinked up at the source of the voice. He held some sort of...gun?

“What do you know of the mysteries of Gravity Falls?” the question was posed again. He was supposed to say something? Oh. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“My mind is cleared, thanks to the Society of the Blind Eye.”

He didn’t know quite where the words came from, but they felt right.

“It is unseen!” the figures around him chorused.

“Dipper, how do you feel?”

“I...Dipper? Who...is that me?”

A hush fell over the group, and the man in front of him paused as he was removing a capsule from the gun.

After a moment, he spoke, “Return the boy, and speak of this to no one. Come back when you’re done.”

_ Wait, what? _

But the boy (Dipper? Was that his name?) was unconscious before he realised he closed his eyes.

 

◬ ◬◬

 

His name was apparently Dipper, or at least that’s what people kept calling him. He couldn’t handle the constant attention, the references to ‘Stan’s and ‘Mabel’s that he didn’t know, so he ran away from a kind old ‘Lazy Susan’ into the woods.

The woods didn’t tell him weird things. He would remember those people, if they were important, right? He knew that Dipper (probably) wasn’t even his real name. Or maybe it was and he was just being unreasonable.

 

He was afraid. He didn’t know if they were telling the truth or taking advantage of his amnesia.

“Kid, are you okay?”

The boy turned, and saw a man with mousy brown hair and a hiking backpack. His stranger-danger alert had been going on nonstop these past few days, and he didn’t put much stock in it, anymore. He just avoided everyone.

“I guess.”

He turned back around, continuing to walk. He was thirsty, and if he hadn’t gotten lost, there was a freshwater stream not far from here.

“Hey, kid, got any parents or anything around here?” the hiker(?) asked. The boy gave a nod, anything to get this stranger to leave him alone. “Mind if I make sure you get back okay?”

Yes, he did very much mind.

“They’re not far; I’ll be fine,” the boy said softly. He looked back long enough to notice the hiker take in his appearance, and he realised that he couldn’t blame the hiker for his concern. For all intents and purposes, he looked like (and was) some kid who got lost in the woods. For a while. His hair was a mess, his clothes covered in dirt, and he knew he probably had bags under his eyes from the sleep that he wasn’t getting on the cold, hard ground.

“That’s great, less of a journey for us.”

He wasn’t going to shake the hiker...at least not with words. The boy glared, eying the area around him. After a moment of stillness, the boy made a break for the nearest tree with a branch low enough for him to reach. This meant, of course, that the man could reach it, but he was counting on a head-start and a branch he could swing. He made his way up the tree (heaven only knew where the muscle memory came from) until he found a branch weak enough to rip off and use as a weapon. Sure, he was stuck up here, but he would like to see the man try and get him off.

He ignored the gurgle of his stomach like he had already been doing, and ignored the way his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Ugh.

“Kid, I’m just trying to help!”

_ I don’t care. _

“I have food? And water!”

_ Go away. I. Don’t. Care. _

“Fine, I’ll leave.”

_I._ _ DON’T- wait, what? _

The boy glanced down, and found the hiker leaving a small bundle of stuff on a nearby tree. Then he turned and, with one last glance up in the tree that the boy had disappeared into, left. 

No way it had been that simple. He was cautious as he made his way down, still wielding his stick. A few branches away from the ground, he paused, glancing around. Still nothing. He quickly made his way over to the care package before returning back into the tree. He wasn’t going to let someone get the drop on his while he was going through the little bundle.

Once he was secured on one of the thicker branches, he settled against the trunk and untied the bundle. There was a small bottle of water, and a variety of dried food that had the boy’s stomach making its hunger known. It was a small amount, but more than enough for the tired boy. At the bottom was a page ripped from a small notebook which had a map of a small section of the forest, showing a stream, some berry bushes, and where a small cabin was. Dipper crumpled it up, tempted to throw it, just to be difficult.

Then he unwrinkled it, folded it, and put it in his pocket. He would think about it after his body stopped grumbling at him.


	2. he's coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> William Harrison was just looking to prove that the forest around Gravity Falls wasn't quite normal.  
> He hadn't meant to rent a haunted cabin or find some runaway child (if he was human).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoop now i can procrastinate writing this for another month ;P  
> uhm  
> i mean  
> uh...  
> i have a tumblr and a deviantart (boop: angelicera.tumblr.com and beep: http://angelicera.deviantart.com/)  
> i do occasionally post Gravity Falls stuff. At least until Rick and Morty and Star v. the Forces of Evil air their third seasons.

William Harrison had never really considered himself out of the ordinary. He broke an average amount of bones doing an average amount of dumb, kid/teenage things, had an average amount of secrets and weird mannerisms and obsessions. His main obsession was an interest in the paranormal as a result of the tales his father used to share with him. The myths of ancient Greece, the faerie folk of Ireland, ghost stories from New Orleans...and of course, the stories of one small town in Oregon called Gravity Falls. Stories of monsters in the woods, of hidebehinds and gnomes, of dream demons and mad scientists. He visited once before, with his father when he was eight, and found that the scientist of legend (a man known as Stanford Pines) had become an eccentric in his old age, showing off and sometimes pawning off ‘oddities’ in his aptly named ‘Mystery hack.’ (The only true oddity was the fact that anyone paid for that junk.) Despite that, William had seen things back then- real legends. 

He couldn’t remember what they were. But he  _ knew _ that he saw  _ something _ . And he knew that maybe the town was an innocent, sleepy little town nestled in Oregon’s forests. But he knew that the forest that surrounded the town was anything but innocent and sleepy.

The kid, he felt, was part of that. Perhaps he was some sort of fae (a half-breed, maybe)? A changeling? A discarded thrall? More than likely, it was just a human child with a stranger danger alarm (understandable, really, to not want to walk around with a stranger in the middle of the woods alone). But still.

He hoped the kid wasn’t so paranoid as to ignore the care package and end up dying of dehydration or something. He gave a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. He pushed past a final barrier of trees to find his clearing, and was greeted by the site of the small cabin he had rented. He was pretty sure it was haunted, because an inordinate amount of his stuff kept getting misplaced, but it seemed more mischievous than malevolent.

“Hello, ghost,” William announced to the empty(?) cabin, closing the door behind himself. As he did so, he could have sworn he heard a ‘hello’ right back. But he was pretty sure that it was just the wind (there was a breeze today, making the heat bearable) and his brain searching for it rather than the sound having a paranormal explanation. He slipped his backpack off, letting it fall to the ground beside the doorway and making his way to one of the very few furnishings in the one-room area- an ancient little desk, contrasted by a small, smooth black stool that William had brought. Better than the provided chair which may or may not have broken as soon as William so much as looked at it wrong and provided a very toasty fire on his first night.

Said fire did definitely provide perfectly roasted marshmallows, though, William would admit.

 

The next time he saw the boy, William found him eyeing the rather nice campfire that William had made for himself. At first, William hadn’t been sure that it wasn’t a trick of the flickering light, but as he watched it, he noticed a mop of tangled brown hair. He stared, apparently, for a moment too long, because he noticed the small figure flinch, turn, and flee. Despite that, William rolled his eyes in amusement, smiling at the fire. It was comforting that the boy could find him if need be.

 

Appearances of the boy were scattered (just like William’s socks, as a matter of fact. The ghost had taken all his socks and mixed them up before hiding them all over the cabin that morning). Like a stray cat, the boy was hesitant to approach and dangerous when approached, but he did appear in the tree line in the firelight more often than not. And William knew that, like a stray cat, the boy had to be dealt with with patient persistence. So William left little packages of food where he knew the boy was lurking (ninja, he was not), and left the fire (carefully observed) going for a little longer than necessary for the boy to inch closer to. He ran anytime William opened the door, but after a couple of visits ignored the way William would watch from the cabin’s one window.

William viewed that as a win.

 

William turned and slowly faded into wakefulness- was that knocking? The wind was rustling the trees, maybe a stray noise woke him. Ugh. His eyes flickered open, and he immediately jolted. Inches from his face, an eerily blue young girl stared at him. Her hair was braided, with one seeming to fall along her back while the other spilled over her shoulder into William’s-- oh, no, no, no.

“He’s coming.”

The girl’s mouth never moved, and William shrank back into the sheets, “Wha- who? You-”

“He’s coming,  _ he’s coming, HE’S C̨̢O͘M͏IN͡͞G̷̨ _ -”

Suddenly, her braids shot behind her head, as if they were being pulled by some unseen being. Her mouth opened in a silent scream of pain as she was dragged away. Still she continued to shout, “H̷͘͡͝E̵͢͡'̸҉̢̛͟S͟ ҉͞C͏͏O̷̧͏M̡̛͜I̡҉N̵͡G͜͡҉,̶̶̛ ͏H͏E͘͢҉'̢̢͢S̵͜͟͠ ̢̛͘͢C̛͝O-”

 

He flinched, and his eyes burst open when he heard a knocking. ‘He’s coming, he’s coming’ echoed in his brain.

William really, really didn’t want to die at 22. He really didn’t want to die in some dumb cabin in some dumb woods in some dumb town that no one outside of a 5 mile radius even  _ knew _ about  _ his brother would go looking for him, what if he got hurt too? _

He got out of bed slowly, grabbing the taser he had bought at his family’s insistence (glad, now, for their concern). His paranoia diminished ever so slightly when he recognised that the knocking was more hesitant than demanding or ominous. He was cautious, quiet as he advanced towards the door. He opened it, taser at the ready, and paused at the sight.

The boy had come.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is technically only a minute later than I said, in my timezone, so..................

“Dipper? Dipper!”   
Ugh, why did people keep calling him that? If it was his name, it was a stupid one, and if it was a nickname...well, it was still stupid. Honestly, Tyrone would be such a better name (actually, he might start calling himself that. It was better than having to call himself ‘Dipper.’)

He stared down from the safety of his tree as a girl- brown-haired, about twelve, thirteen, maybe?- walked through the woods, calling for him. She wore a plain green sweater which made Tyrone sweat just looking at her.

Why wouldn’t they just leave him alone? He clearly wanted nothing to do them, or he would’ve been wherever they called home by now. He quieted his groan, though, not wanting to be caught. As soon as the girl passed, he made his way down the tree silently as he could (it wasn’t very silent, but the rustling was natural, and the girl didn’t return, so. It was a win in his book). He didn’t bother with trying to measure time, but he figured it was about lunchtime by the way his stomach grumbled.

He had ‘lunchtime’ often. Berries weren’t that filling, and were definitely no source of protein. He was so close to either raiding the cabin of the man from the other day, or just giving up and asking to stay with him. He at least seemed to have good intentions that didn’t include expecting him to be whoever those weirdos thought he was. 

At any rate, his stomach definitely agreed with the thought of help.

He glanced around for any berry bushes, his shoulders slumping as he gave a disappointed sigh. He  _ had _ been around some berries that he was desperate enough to trust before he had heard the girl’s far off yelling. After that, it had been a startled scramble away.

Still, he hadn’t gone that far.

Or at least, he didn’t think he had gone far. But what felt like  _ at least _ a mile later, Tyrone had to concede.

He was lost.

Sure, that was, overall, a given, but he hadn’t yet experienced this paranoid feeling inside the forest. Not to say that he hadn’t been paranoid, but he hadn’t quite felt so terrifyingly lost before. Like the forest had, up to this point, been helping him, almost.

It...sounded crazy, admittedly. Forests weren’t sentient. He had just been lucky to stumble on patches of food and not run into any wildlife…

He paused. Was it really just luck?

He swore he saw something blinking out of the corner of his eyes, and he snapped his head to the side. No, it was just trees. Just trees, trees,  _ trees _ .

He took a breath, and tugged his frayed vest closer to himself. It was just nerves. It was hard to sleep without really decent shelter, and his meals were hardly filling. His body was just feeling a little worn down. That’s all. He took another breath, before turning back. He’d retrace his steps and work from there.

 

It felt like hours later when he finally found anything distinctly familiar, the low, steady sound of a stream catching his ears. His feet complained, but his face brightened when he finally saw the water. It didn’t matter that the sun had already set--he was more or less back where things were familiar. Okay, emphasis on the less, because he wasn’t even wholly sure that this was the same stream that he had been using for the past...he had been out here for a while, actually, hadn’t he? Then it was definitely strange that he had never really caught sight of the local wildlife.

Whatever, that was a thought process for another time. Like, after he found that hiker and got actual food of substance.

“Dipper?” he heard, and he jumped. Heck. He hadn’t spent all this time finding his way back just to get caught--he turned, and it took him a moment to process in the fading light.

A...an actual bear.

With...multiple heads.

“What are you doing out so late, child?”

It _ talked _ . Tyrone didn’t remember much, sure, but he remembered that animals weren’t normally supposed to do that.

He did the first rational thing that came to mind. Shriek and run. He vaguely heard the name that  _ wasn’t really his name _ behind him as he tore through the forest, but he didn’t stop, not even when he realised that he wasn’t being chased. He didn’t stop as he passed familiar woods, and he didn’t stop until he came upon a small cabin in the woods. He slowed, and paused.

He waited, hesitating now that he was finally here. Hadn’t he already decided to accept a little generosity? He was moments away from a roof over his head, minutes away from not having to scavenge bushes just to sate his stomach.

His stood in front of the door, and felt a shiver run down his back. He felt like he was being watched. He turned, watching the darkness around him in retaliation, but there was nothing there. Nothing he could see anyway. He was fine, though. He had been fine. Everything was fine. He tensed, then raised his fist. He knocked on the door, and waited. When there wasn’t a response, he gave another, more hesitant knock. Was he asleep? Tyrone didn’t know what time it was, maybe it was an unreasonable time of night? He glanced down with a sigh; another night of restless bouts of sleep in trees seemed all the more unappealing when he had been so close to a warm building. He had almost resigned himself to his fate when the door opened.

The hiker looked on edge, but Tyrone attributed that to his sleep being disrupted more than anything.

There was a pause, before the hiker spoke, “Kid, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I…” his voice felt weird. He hadn’t really used it much recently, except when he was shrieking at talking bears apparently. He still wasn’t sure how much he believed in what he saw. The moonlight did strange things. “I’m fine. I was just...can I stay here?”

“Of course,” the hiker stepped aside, loosening his grip on what looked like...a taser. Tyrone was glad that he was the sort to not lead with an attack. “I take it that roughing it got a little too rough for you, eh...what is your name, anyway? Mine’s William.”

Tyrone shrugged as he glanced around the small cabin, “People call me...Dipper, for some reason. But it’s a stupid name. Tyrone is a cooler name.”

“Tyrone is not a cool--wait, so you...do you not know your name?”

“I...don’t,” he admitted. “I just woke up with a bunch of people telling me who I am, but I just…”

William sighed, but then gave a smile as he ruffled Tyrone’s hair, “Okay, I’ll take care of you while I’m here. But we have  _ got _ to get you a better name.”

“Tyrone is a  _ fine _ name!”

“Sure, kid. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sleep till morning. There’s plenty of room on the bed for both of us, if you don’t mind.”   
Tyrone tried his best to not look too excited at the prospect. He didn’t bother getting ready for bed, simply tearing off his vest and shoes before climbing under the covers. He was out in moments.

**Author's Note:**

> I got a tumblr thing where I occasionally post Gravity Falls stuff: http://angelicera.tumblr.com/  
> You should totes check it out it's not terrible usually


End file.
